Ep 384: What Should I Read for a Deeper New Year?

28:55But I don't think our world or our economy is going to support that. So it matters that we're losing our ability to think. And this is sort of the Bible, the original source document about why technology is not just a tool and all that matters is how you use it in the moment. It can have long-term impacts. All right, final book I want to talk about, Richard Rohr's Falling Upward. this is definitely especially an important book if you're like leaving your early adulthood so basically the idea of richard rohr who is um a franciscan priest from new mexico his basic idea is there's two phases to life there's this first phase of life as you go through your 20s into your 30s where what's happening here is it's all uphill uh all ascent in a positive sense like you have your goals you're going after them you're making progress you're moving up to career ladder you get married maybe you have a family like things are going well you're comfortable everything is all potential and then he says guess what happens at some point the hammer falls and hardship happens that's just the human condition you lose this job you get sick this didn't work out the way you wanted this plateaus you deal with like some sort of other types of issues the hardship enters the picture and he says in this book great that's when the interesting stuff begins it's the hardship that happens like as you approach midlife that you emerge out of and when you you have this second peak that is much more built around deeper wisdom it's built around connection to others it's built around helping others it's built around like gratitude and understanding of the beauty of the world around you putting your circumstances into um into context getting out of this completely egocentric part of view and he's like this is where like the the beautiful phase of life emerges if you navigate that second slope properly.

30:42So it's like an instruction manual for what you do in life when there's hardship. David Brooks, he took this same idea. He basically took Richard Rohr and wrote a longer version of this book with more stories. That's the second mountain. So if you want a more digestible, story-driven version of Rohr's ideas, you can also read David Brooks' book, The Second Mountain, which is about the same thing, about Brooks going through this transition after his initial ascent to be a very successful writer, an op-ed writer, his divorce and his nihilistic despair and sort of how he refound in the second half of life like a different way, a much more meaningful phase.

31:19So I think it's like read this before you need it. It's a really important book when you're thinking about navigating life in a deep way. And it's a book that I keep thinking about. Again, when you look around the postmodern digital, especially with younger people, there is no framework to deal with hardship. And people just fall into hardship tunnels or fall into trauma tunnels. It all just becomes I can barely function. We see these videos of college students. They're like, I can barely – I'm overcome with disordering rage around God knows something that you didn't even know was an issue until some academic idea made into the mainstream about you mentioned this whatever, whatever.

32:03Like people just crippled by hardship. We don't have the frames anymore. We have a lot of – in the postmodern digital, we get a lot of tools to explain and pass around understanding about all the different ways that everyone's harming everyone and the power dynamics, et cetera. But we don't have the tools for like, but how do you navigate that and climb? How do you like turn – as a hardship is also like how do you move through that? How do you find like beauty in life through things not going the way you want? Like we don't talk enough about that. This book is about that. And so I think it's really important, especially again, all of this goes into our current moment where we're on our phones and not in real life.

32:37or letting processors think for us instead of our neurons. This moment has all sorts of negative side effects. These are the type of books that can help you find grounding in depth, even in that world. All right. So those, Jesse, I grabbed those just off the shelf. So again, these aren't the best six, but there's six that I think are really important. I've read all those books multiple times. A couple of follow-ups. When do you think we should have these books read by? I mean, let's be realistic. Like you can take all the way to like the 5th of January. I don't want to be unreasonable. um no just read i don't know pick some pick some that seem interesting start reading them put down the phone actually read them you know i have a goal for each just to because needing to get a book done by a certain time forces you to like put aside reading time and not look at your phone because like i'm not going to get this done if i have it there so i don't know read one of them the first week of the new year how about that and then see what goes from there and then did ig start on a browser no and that was part of why it was so innovative because it was using the phone on the camera on the phone.

33:39It was phone native. Okay. That's why it was so successful is that Facebook was going through all this effort to build out the mobile version of Facebook. And like, how does this work? IG was mobile native because it had to use the phone. And that's why I don't give Zuckerberg credit. He's good at acquisitions. He's bad at ideas. Look at the metaverse, you know, look at they're like stumbling AI plays, but he's good at acquisitions. And I think what he saw with IG was like, oh, wait a second. this has to be on the phone because that's where the camera is. But if this is on the phone, people are looking at it way more often because their phone is with them.

34:13Oh, having a good interface on the phone means you're going to 10 X your engagement. So yeah, I do kind of kicked. I, I do is who I think kicked off the phone age. I mean, Facebook mobile was a thing, but the early versions of it were not very good. And people like, I'll just use the web. I guess one of the things about Zuckerberg and ideas is you can kind of look at it like a GM and make an acquisition. say a GM has been on a, of a team for like 10 years and he makes good acquisitions and bad acquisitions. I mean, yeah. Yeah. Like I think, um, he's definitely had IG and WhatsApp, IG and WhatsApp were really good acquisitions.

34:46Um, he was, I think he was good to realize from a financial perspective, the engagement model. Uh, the main thing I think has his most brilliant move was probably recognizing a little late, but recognizing, oh, the power of data-targeted advertising. He learned that looking at Google. Like, oh, they have like, they're using more information to target these ads. More they're using the search terms to target the ads. And them realizing, wait a second, we have a lot more data than that on people. Like our business is making money off of data. So everything is about gathering data and monetizing data.

35:29And we use apps to do that. I think that was like a huge shift in his thinking. And you got to give him credit. That's that company is is almost a trillion dollar company, not trillion dollar company right now. So, you know, he correctly saw there's a lot of money in that. And I guess when you have that much money, there's also something to be said for you can take swings and absorb them. Why not? Yeah, it's kind of like the Yankees. Yeah. Dodgers. Yeah. You can take those swings. Like, I don't know if there's like picture of Japan is going to, you know, pan out or not. But let's just do a$75 million deal and see.

35:57because if they do, it can really help you in your world series run. All right. Enough of that. Let's do God. We're letting people take over the show, aren't we? Yeah. It's all calls. Yeah. How many do we got? Seven. All right. I'm going to be quick. This is my thing. Hold me to this. No long answers. I'm going to be pithy, right? And I asked people to do short calls. They're mainly pretty short, right? Yeah. Okay. And you will confirm. I have not heard any of these. Confirmed. All right. Are these all from Mark Zuckerberg? You son of a bitch. He wants to hire you. Yeah. The right is his biography.

36:30I want to buy deep media is the new WhatsApp. I want to buy your company. You know what? Actually, if he offered you like$5 million, you'd probably write his biography, wouldn't you? You know what? Biography. I would be really interested in writing, but I don't know why I would spend so many years doing this. Like it makes no sense for me, but like I could make a good pitch to the family foundation to do it. Crichton. Oh, would that be interesting? Again, I think it would take me five years to do that. Right. And that doesn't make sense. so i hope someone else does but man there could be an epic like a creighton biography it spans before we landed on the moon all the way through like the modern internet age and he was kind of involved in all of this and so there's like a there's a there's a structural backbone there for like the entire sort of history of the post second half of the 20th century of all these different economies and ideas and televisions and movies and what was happening in publishing and he's this weird interesting guy um there's a ton he had his family there's a ton of papers on him he's a very well documented guy but i thought about that for a second because i've been reading a bunch of creighton in my uh thriller december yeah but i was like oh man why would i do that though but if you could pick a foursome he'd probably be in your golfing foursome right yeah i mean i don't think i'd go i play golf because it would be terrible i'd be like kind of like some metaphor michael i have a lot of questions for you let me just take my first shot here and the club is in his eye he's dead i just killed him with my driver by accident that would be the immediate he probably didn't play much golf either he has been putting green yeah he was like six nine or something was he that tall six seven he's very tall maybe six six yeah he's a really tall guy wow which i think makes golf harder probably i don't know it can i don't know i guess michael jordan played a lot of golf all right this we're off track here let us get to our first call.

38:18Enric here, beaconing the Deep Work HQ from Norway. I went to hypnosis to get rid of my Facebook addiction back in 2010 to be able to finish my master's thesis. So later when I discovered your books, it was like coming home. Thank you very much. Now I have two boys, one and four, together with a smartphone-addicted mother. And there's a power struggle going on in the family and I need your help to win it. My first question, I realized the toxic effect social media had on me on my own the hard way. How can I help my boys do the same and come to the same conclusion? All the while, their mother and grandparents use iPads and smartphones as their go-to pacifier.

39:02My second question, when I have won the boys over to team dad slash no screens, how can we together shame their mother into submission to our screen-free cause? this is our most desperate hour help me obi-wan kenobi you're my only hope all right i appreciate the question as everyone i think any good couples therapist will tell you jesse one of the key strategies of couples therapy is shaming the other person in the submission i think that's like the name of one of esther perel's books shame the bastard in the submission um let me put aside what to do with your your wife and grant and her parents or in-laws like there be dragons, you can't change other adults' behaviors.

39:41But how you raise your own kids, this really matters. Remember, this idea that these technologies are somehow fundamental, this is like driving a car and everyone has to do it eventually, so why are we putting this off, is absolute nonsense. It is a massive attention conglomerate that just tries to make money off of your distraction. It doesn't mean that it's evil for everyone or that it necessarily needs to be banned, but it is not fundamental and it's not necessary. And the idea that it's somehow important for these kids to be exposed to it, or you're holding them off of an important life thing every month that you're saying you can't be on social media, it's nonsense.

40:16You got to see this like you would see cigarettes. Not that we necessarily want to ban them, but it's completely reasonable to be like my 14 year old's not smoking. So I do think you need to hold the line. And the line I think you need to hold is I would typically say nothing like a smartphone. Here we would say until high school. That might be different in Norway, the ages, but like roughly that like 14, 15 year old. And even that's gonna be like just for logistics. That's a heavily locked down phone. Certainly no social media apps or access to YouTube. It's just like you need to be able to do text messaging and like send photos around and look up movie times on the phone or whatever.

40:50And then 16 more or less is when you begin to pull the restrictions back. The thing I would hold until they leave the house, no matter where they are on that scale, the kitchen lives in the kitchen. I mean, the phone lives in the kitchen. When your home is plugged in in the kitchen, it's not your property. It is mine. It is not a constant companion. You do not just carry that phone with you and you just kind of use it whenever. It is a tool. And when you need it, you come to the kitchen. If you're in a text conversation, you sit there in the kitchen to finish the conversation. You need to look something up.

41:20You come to the kitchen and you look it up. They learn it's a tool, not a companion. And it's the absolute best way to do it. And you should do the same with your own phone. You should ask your wife to join you she probably won't but whatever you just do it your way i think that is so vital that's how you you break the pacifier effect because so much what happens is people see this as this uh binary either i'm not using a phone and it's like this big to do and i make a big deal about it or i do it all right i mean it's like someone saying like i never touch a drop of alcohol and then someone is like well you know it's nice to have wine at dinner parties and then they they show up the next day with a foam dome on with two uh beer bottles on a helmet with straws coming to their mouth.

41:58It's not all or nothing. So I was like, okay, you're now in high school of the equivalent of Norway. You have a smartphone because this is how you coordinate with your friends and look up stuff. Doesn't mean you can be in your bedroom till four in the morning looking at porn while listening to Far Right podcast. No, I don't want you to do that. Not while you're living here. I'm still your parent. The phone lives in the kitchen. You use it there when you need it. You can bring it with you if you're going out with your friends when you come back, you buy the kitchen. So you just learn to do your homework, to watch TV, to be at meals with your family, to be reading the book in another room that the phone is just not right there.

42:34You prevent it from becoming that default sort of pacification. I think that is so critical for kids. Now, here's the other caveat I want to throw at you. An iPad is just an inconveniently large iPhone. It's the same. If they have an iPad with all those apps on it and the Internet and it's theirs and they have it and they can keep it in their room, you've just given them a bad iPhone. It's hard to fit in your pocket, but it's running iOS. It's the same thing. It's just a bigger screen. When the first iPads came out, this was the thing that they were mocked at first before they turned out to be a very popular product.

43:05The mocking was like, wait a second. This is just running the exact same phone operating and software with the exact same touch interface just on like a bigger phone. This is just like a worse phone. How is this ever going to sell? And then it did because people like having larger things for like reading and watching things and phones are pretty small. But it is just a phone. So if they have an iPad, that lives in the kitchen too. Same rules. that's completely locked down until you're 16. You do not have unrestricted access to your own iPad before like 14 or 15. The same rules. It's just an inconveniently large iPhone, all right?

43:35So that's what I say you need to do. I think that is the best way to raise kids. You're giving them a massive competitive advantage, not just professionally and academically, but just in terms of human flourishing. So I would hold that line. Say, this is just very important to me as a parent. I'll be the parent in charge of technology. That's fine. This is very important, and that's what we're doing. All right, who do we got next? Hey, Cal. This is Christian from Arizona. I have a question about building a creative deep life when your identity spans more than one craft. I'm a creative writer, I'm a photographer, and I also DJ and book music events.

44:05I also work a full-time digital job that leans on a lot of these same creative abilities. I'm efficient with the work, so I usually have time left at the end of the day, but after spending hours in a screen-heavy, creative but shallow mode, I'm finding it hard to switch gears into deeper creative work when I'm done with my day job. Because of that, I tend to only have the energy for one craft at a time. The rotation has been a pattern for most of my life, but now that I'm well into my second career and have my day job fairly locked down, I'm trying to engage with my passions more intentionally, especially writing and photography, which I'd eventually like to bring forward as my main work.

44:36But the mental train from my day job still makes it hard to give more than one creative pursuit steady momentum at any given time. So my question is, how do you design a deep life when your identity is genuinely multimodal, but your job draws from the same cognitive and creative bandwidth you need for your craft? Is this something you can handle through seasonal focus or is there another way to think about it? Thanks. You got to just slow down, right? You just have to accept it takes a lot of energy to work on these projects. They can be very meaningful, these out-of-work projects, but it takes a lot of energy.

45:09And as you said, sometimes that energy is coming from the same reservoir you've been pulling on all day during work. So just be okay with that. Yeah, I'm just kind of working on one thing. And often I can just do a little bit. And then occasionally, like I have like a full day, I can make bigger progress. And I'm just happy I have that in my life. And I'm expanding out to like, what did I do this year and not what did I get done this week? I'm leaving that sort of short-term churn productivity mindset with these non-professional tasks. And just it's a slow productivity. I'm just going to, I work on this slow and steady.

45:40Now, a couple of things to consider. One, you can, if you need, have a much more definitive transition between work and non-work. that helps make it exercise based, maybe outside if you're able to do like a hard run and like an outdoor prison yard style workout, like something that gets you like completely changes your context and gets all your muscles working and exhaust you. And then you come in and like, you know, you eat and whatever, like you've completely swapped your context, having a separate really good space for doing your nonprofessional tasks works as well. Like here's my really cool workshop I go to that I work on my photography or whatever and care about that space.

46:13So it's just sort of like fun to be there that helps as well and then also like this is more extreme but if your career is going well your finances are under control i think it's completely reasonable like one of the lifestyle centric planning plans you might explore at some point is like i'm actually backing off my work some and i'm going to spend more time working on other things that's that's really common actually in lifestyle centric planning where people who have the ability to do so end up this is the thing they change in their lifestyle is less work more non-work projects and they just find that like a maybe like a 50 50 uh balance is what they want now that sounds crazy for a lot of people how could you possibly do that but some people are in a situation where they can they work remotely they're really good they can raise their rates they live cheaply they whatever it is right and they can kind of find a way to make that work so i would keep those all in mind i mean it's kind of what i'm doing here jesse was trying to get the the office of the deep work hq i'm really I mean it's hard for me to pull the trigger on that because it's a Rube Goldberg machine of parts that all fit together to try to get everything I want to do.

47:16The lights and this and that and someone has to install this first before we do that. I don't quite see the whole thing. But I really want that space to be a space about creation. It's like half everything is there for me to like be building things with like microelectronics and 3D printing and half like everything is there for motivation for writing. It's like a creative space where I go and all I think there is like creating. and like that makes a difference like having that space makes it easier and more fun and more rewarding to switch over to that mindset um there we go let's uh what are we only two questions in yep should we uh should we do one more and then we'll we'll hear from a sponsor is that a good way to do it do one more one more all right it's gonna be a good one so i work for myself and i largely get to make my own schedule one of the challenges i'm encountering is that when i'm trying to time block out my schedule for the week, what I'll often encounter is that I'll be inspired to do some writing for the job while the time block has me doing something else, or I'm supposed to be making some big decisions, but my brain is just not cooperating.

48:19What would you recommend here? Do you stick with it? Do you just sit there even if you're not getting much done, but to build that muscle the way that sometimes you might be told to do in meditation, just stay on the cushion? Or do you switch to the task that maybe has more life force in it or something else entirely? Thank you. I don't know. I think the answer is probably more amphetamines. You really can boom. You can rock and roll on something when you're tweaking. You're just like, let's do it. Emails. A lot of all caps emails. Boom. You type boom a lot when you're on amphetamines. boom attachment um i'm gonna give you a compromise i think you're time blocking too far in advance don't try to figure out your whole week down to the scale of time instead you might have a good weekly plan i got to get this writing done i got to do the research for this project and then here's like some key tasks i need to get done and during your weekly plan especially for like key things where you have to go somewhere maybe you have to go across town you might want to get those on your calendar so you don't run out of time but then time block each day as you get there leave yourself flexibility so that you can approach the day and say, all right, I have some, you know, some room to decide what to do when.

49:35And you know what? I'm not really feeling writing this morning. So what if instead I do all of my tasks that I had for this week? That's the mood I'm in. I'm all hyped up on caffeine, but I'm feeling bad about this writing project. Or like maybe I'm going to write midday or like tackle each day, look at your weekly plan and make the best day you can. So now you're not trying to predict too far in advance. That works well. Now, if you've just made a plan for that day that's reasonable. And now you're in that plan and you're like, I don't know, this is just kind of hard. I don't want to do it. That's then when this is the compromise.

50:03You're like, this is my time block. I made this time block plan for today. This is a reasonable mix of my mood and available energy and time. This is what I'm going to do. And you just kind of practice sticking with it. Right? So I want it planned like next Friday, what you're going to be doing at 10. But if I plan what I'm doing today at 10, then I would do my best to actually stick with that. If you want a more extreme version of that, Check out my interview with Oliver Berkman. That's a couple of years ago. Oliver is more on the side of like, just like, let it ride. Make sure you get worked on on whatever's most important that day, like whatever's most important to you.

50:34And then it's just like whatever you're in the mood for. Now we had an argument about it. I said, I think that's ideal, but most jobs just don't allow that. And we have to deal in the reality of the workloads of most people. You're working on 10 simultaneous things. You just can't, if you approach the day, like, what am I in the mood to do? It's not going to work. But I did agree with him from a cognitive standpoint. it is a nice way to approach work. So he pushes for a more extreme version. So you could check that out. I interview with him if you want to see something that leans more towards flexibility.

51:01But the compromise is where I would fall. All right. Now we're going to do, Jesse, a quick break to hear from another sponsor. This episode is brought to you by Google Chrome. You think you know a browser, but Gemini and Chrome, that's new. It can help you with practically anything on the web, like restoring a vintage motorcycle from a 50-page restoration block, or finally break down that long article you've had open for weeks. Gemini and Chrome is here for it. Ready to make anything online make sense? There's no place like Chrome. Check responses set up required compatibility and availability varies 18 plus.

51:34There's been a lot of talk recently about AI, including some big radical visions of what this technology might one day do. But here's what I care about. How can the tools that exist right now make the shallow work that I do right now easier? I'm all about the pragmatism. This is where a new tool from Notion comes in. It's called Notion Agent, and it definitely caught my attention. So Notion, as you know, longtime sponsor of the show, is a service that brings all of your notes, documents, and projects into one connected space that just works. Notion Agent now makes this space even easier and more delightful by helping you do busy work on your behalf.

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52:54Try Notion now with Notion Agent at notion.com slash cal. Now, you have to type that in all lowercase letters, notion.com slash cal, to try your new AI teammate, Notion Agent, today. When you use our link, remember, you're supporting our show. So that's notion.com slash pal. Let's also talk about Wayfair. When you need to get your home holiday ready fast, Wayfair has you covered from cozy bedding to festive decor for every room. They're literally a one-stop shop for all things home. Now let's say you need, for example, because we all do evergreen accent pillows to make your living room more sort of seasonally appropriate.

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54:39head to wayfair.com right now to shop all things home that's w-a-y-f-a-i-r.com wayfair every style every home all right let's get back to the questions jesse um i think we need to take a uh i was just thinking about before we get to the next question do we need a sleigh bell break sure i am worried that we're losing the the holiday spirit All right. There we go. Now we are ready to hear some more questions on our holiday spectacular. Hey, Cal. Joe from Jerusalem. Been a fan for many years. And I'm wondering if you see a way of building the deep life for areas and people who are not purely knowledge work, meaning salespeople or other professions that require other people's attention and are not strictly focus based.

55:34Thank you. And we'd love to hear what you think. Well, that's a good question. First caller from Jerusalem. That's cool. That's a cool place to be around the holidays. Very like, you know, audiences from all over the world. It's a very international audience. Yeah. A lot of UK people too. Yeah. I get emails from all sorts of people. Well, my books are all over. I think it's like, we're getting closer to 50 languages now. So it's hard to stay away from all things Cal Newport. I got to help your terminology here. You're saying, can I do the deep life if I'm in a job in which people constantly need my attention?

56:11Let's be careful of technology. The deep life is my description of a life that you have engineered to focus heavily on things that matter to you and to reduce things that don't. My argument is if you don't pursue a deep life, it's hard to do any of the other stuff I talk about. Like why get off your phone if you have nothing to do when you put it down? Why like move away from a job that's all emails if it's just an empty, boring void when you're not, you know, an outlook? So I think the deep life is a foundation on which like everything else we talk about matters. My key technique for the deep life is lifestyle-centric planning, working backwards from a vision of what you want in your ideal lifestyle, then saying how do I move closer to that vision using the obstacles and opportunities that I currently possess?

56:52That's the deep life. I'm writing a book about that now, coming out next year. That's one topic. You're talking about more of the distraction in the workplace, which I cover in my books, Deep Work, and in my book, A World Without Email, and to a lesser extent, my book, Slow Productivity. That's different. A more focused topic, probably the one I'm known most for. So in that topic, what I'm arguing is the human brain has a hard time context switching from one thing to another. If you need to produce something new using your brain in a way that's time efficient and produces the best quality, it has to be able to focus without distraction on that thing.

57:25That's just how the human brain functions. So we should be careful if that is your job. We should be careful about putting you in a work environment that has collaboration styles that require you to constantly be changing your attention back and forth. That's what that theory is about. What you're talking about is like if you have a job that's based on like responding to people, I don't see it as a problem with either of that because we're talking about different things. It has nothing to do with the deep life. That's a bigger picture. Like what do I want my ideal lifestyle to be with and am I moving forward to it?

57:55You should be doing that, by the way. but that's above the level right now of your specific job. And if you don't do deep work in your job, if you're not trying to create new value from scratch with your brain, then worrying about context switch or this or that is much less important. So you just worry about like, how do I do my job best? So you can be a believer in the ideas I talk about without feeling like you're doing something wrong by being in a job that's very like communication based. The caveat is if there is stuff you do in your job that does require you create a new value with your brain, like maybe you talk to a lot of clients, but you also have to create white paper, marketing white papers or really beautiful proposals to try to sell clients, things where you're creating hard value with your brain, find ways to take those efforts and to protect them.

58:35That doesn't mean like I can't be reached by email and I'm in a cave, but it might mean like I have these very specific times where I work in a different location and that's when I get full focus on the creation things. So if you have things in your work life that depend on deep work, protect those. But again, these theories fit for what they fit. They're not moral prescriptions for what makes a good life good or bad. The deep life is an intentional approach to living. Deep work and deep work theory and attention capital theory is just honestly a cognitive science theory about how the brain functions and how you create symbolic knowledge using the brain.

59:07So you're probably okay. People mix all this stuff up all the time. It's my fault for not being clear, but all these things describe very specific things. Well, over time, there's more and more terminologies that you've been using too in creating. Yeah, I do. I do create new terminologies. Yeah, I think the right terminology for all the deep work stuff is attention capital theory. That the best way to make value out of attention capital, to take the attention capital someone has and to produce new value using it is often to make sure that you're creating a cognitive environment with minimal context shifts.

59:37That's attention capital theory. Deep life theory is about you need to focus intentionally on amplifying the stuff that matters and reducing the stuff that doesn't in order to get a life that feels like it's meaningful and resilient and robust, etc. All right, what do we got? Hi, Cal. I'm trying to figure out how we got to this point. In the 90s, they called it disintermediation. And now we're all expected to do everything for ourselves. Each person, no matter how old or young, is supposed to be their own IT department dealing with a confluence of technology that's really just completely overwhelming to most people, let alone get your arms around understanding what's actually happening when you click a button.

1:00:30I would love to hear your thoughts about where this is headed and how we can actually deal with this going forward. I don't know. All right. Good question. I've written about this exact issue many times. My book, World Without Email, I think gets into this probably in the most detail. Here is exactly what happened. When it came to the idea of how do we increase productivity and knowledge work, especially with the advent of digital tools, the management class focused myopically on salary. They said, here is our expense is salary. So if we can reduce the number of people we pay salaries to, we are a more profitable and productive company.

1:01:14They were entirely indifferent to what were the things that you were paying these salaries to, which are essentially brains for a knowledge work company, brains surrounded by a bunch of stuff that keeps the brain alive. You're extracting value from brains. That's your main capital is attention capital. And they completely ignored the reality of like, well, wait a second. These brains cannot just endlessly produce value. They can only do certain things. It takes them a long time to learn new things. It takes a long time to switch from one thing to another. We have to really care about the environment in which we ask these brains to produce valuable stuff for our company.

1:01:51They completely ignored that and said, here's what matters, salary. And so when the personal computer revolution in particular hit the front office, they said, great, this is making lots of things just easy enough that we can fire the people who did this as their full-time job. We don't need typists. We don't need receptionists. We don't need secretaries. We don't need a travel pool to book the travel. We don't need people to keep track of memos and move them around because in theory we could do this all on computers. I can book my travel by filling out online forms. I can send an email instead of having to write out a memo.

1:02:24I don't need someone to take my calls because they can just send emails to me. I don't need a typist because I can use a word processor. So even if I'm a bad typer, I can eventually make the thing in the word processor work. And then we can fire all those support staff. And now we're much more profitable. Now, of course, that didn't work because here's the thing. Those brains that remained had to learn to do all those other things. And those other things take time. And more importantly, this is my contribution that I think was missed from the literature, induce a lot more context shifts, which slows down everything else.

1:02:51Now you're getting a lot less work per unit time out of the brains that are left. So guess what? If you want to produce the same amount of output you had before when all the support staff was there, you got to hire a lot more people and pay them a lot more salaries and you end up spending more money anyways. So it was a complete myopic view, a completely myopic view of productivity. We basically had this idea that if you can do something a support staff used to do on a computer, that was free. Now that would just automatically happen and we could fire that support staff. Not the way it worked.

1:03:24That takes time and it takes context. So I think that is at the core of the productivity paradox in the digital age is we did not think about how the human brains that produce value actually work. I think it's been a massive mistake that has left quite a lot of economic growth and human flourishing on the table. I used to write a lot about that. It kind of bores people, it turns out. I'm very interested in it. It turns out it's not, productivity theories is not what the general public, general public wants to know what books to read. But anyways, I like that stuff. All right, what else do we got?

1:03:54All right, here we go. Hey there, Cal. Thanks so much for your thought leadership around AI. In both my personal and professional worlds, I feel exasperated by how many people seem to be ignoring the very real costs of AI. loss of careers, not entire industries, we're seeing that already, diminishment of skill development related to everything from evaluation to prioritization, concerns about intellectual property, not to mention the environmental impacts. I could go on, but here's my question. What is your suggested two to three sentence response that would bring forward these very real concerns about AI without coming across the way that I think I come across as an ignorant or cranky or both middle-aged Luddite.

1:04:43Thanks. I think with AI, here's what's important. And this actually might put me on the opposite side of you for some things as well. But I just want to tell you the way I think about this. I think it's important that we do not react to stories about what AI could do. There's enough we have to deal with with the real world and real things that exist right now with technology that we should be evidence-based in the things that we're complaining about, that we should keep our, for the most part, our energy focused on here is an actual thing that's happening that's bad. Here's why I think it's bad.

1:05:18And here's what I think we need to do to try to stop this from happening or reduce it. Too many of the AI concerns are concerns about stories about what AI might do. And I think that's what's muddying the water. And then the things that are actually happening right now that we need to be concerned about get mixed up with the stories. And then if you're just someone, the average person, you're like, well, God, you're complaining about everything. AI is going to do all the things. It's going to be the Terminator. It's going to take all my jobs. It's going to get rid of homework. It's going to be the end of movies and books.

1:05:49And it's all these things. Like it sounds so dramatic that eventually when you get to the real thing, we don't have a power capacity in our grid for these data centers. Well, whose information is powering these things that exist right now? And why is that fair? that a couple hundred shareholders can reap all this value from hundreds of thousands of authors. These things that are happening right now, what really happens when we allow really online people to have conversations with simulacrums of people? Why do we think this is – why are we letting you off the hook, the people that are setting up conversational sessions that are leading people to suicide right now?

1:06:28Why are we letting you off the hook? There's all these real issues. And the key to actually, I think, taking action is focus on the real. I think a lot of the storytelling reaction is actually coming from people who are happy to smoke screen the real. I mean, just look at the major AI company leaders over the last year and a half and the type of things they talk about and are afraid of. it's always these like fairy tale fears of half a white collar jobs going away uh super intelligence wiping out humanity because it takes your eye once you've thrown all of this into the mixer who's paying attention to the power usage of the new uh data center who's paying attention to the psychotic breaks induced by introducing simulacrum of people into conversation all these type of things so focus on the things that are happening now and there's so much happening now with AI and these other technologies, we can look at short form video technologies.

1:07:23These are causing harms right now. Look at John Height's book. Why was that so successful? It wasn't stories. I worry that phones one day are going to make us dumber. It was here's what's happening now to this group of people with this technology and it's driving up self-harm and it's driving down resilience and we can see it in the data and it's hurting these kids now. Let's stop hurting these kids now. That's a compelling argument. When you're instead like, you know, Eliezer Yudowsky, Like we need to talk about what type of electronic net will do the best job of catching the Terminator robots when they come.

1:07:55You're in fantasy land talking about fairy tales, and it takes the eye off the prize. So don't get caught up in things that aren't actually happening now, even if the story seems compelling. So don't get caught up in all the jobs are being replaced. That's not happening now. Don't get caught up in superintelligence, things taking over. That's not happening now. That's not really possible. Focus on the actual harms and say, I want to fix this thing. that's happening right now. This is bad. How do we stop this bad thing? I think that's the right way to talk about it. All right. What are we at here?

1:08:27We have one more. One more? All right. Let's hear it. Hey, Cal. A lot of people love the idea of deep work, but they're not able to pursue it because they don't know where to start. And they feel like if they stop all their distractions that are keeping them comfortable, they won't know what to do. So the result is they live a life of, like Tim Ferriss says, unhappiness instead of uncertainty. What advice would you have for someone who's really distracted but wants to start deep work but has no idea where to start and what to do? All right, this is a great question to end on because I think it's a fundamental question.

1:09:13This is why the notion of the deep life has become, I think, so important. Here's the way I think about this. One way to think about this. My book, Deep Work, I think one of the reasons why that book was popular is there was an issue that people were recognizing in the workplace, which was we're really pretty distracted. Like I'm on email all the time and we're running back and forth and I have all these projects and it seems very frenetic in work. This doesn't seem great, right? Like I'm exhausted all the time and what am I really doing? And what Deep Work came in and said, That book came in and said, yeah, this is a problem, but what I want to give you is a bigger, better offer.

1:09:51Deep work as an alternative to shallow work that's dominating your day right now. The bigger, better offer was more compelling. Oh, I see what I could be spending my – this, instead of being on email all day, I could be producing something really hard. Oh, I want to do that. Bigger, better offer, one out. In our current world with smartphone distraction, it's constantly looking at this thing to pacify yourself. You need a bigger, better offer. That's what we're missing. And we're talking about be worried about TikTok, be worried about meta vibes and Sora, be worried about spending all your time yelling at people on X and mindlessly scrolling through auto recommendations on YouTube.

1:10:26What we're missing in that discussion is the bigger, better offer of what you should do next, because you are absolutely right. Without that bigger, better offer, people say, I'll take the devil I know because it's kind of fun than the devil I don't, which is staring into the pit of existential despair. That's exactly what was happening in the workplace. people are like yeah we do send a lot of emails but like what am i supposed to do instead just like sit here they needed a bigger better offer this is where the deep work enters the picture i don't think we can deal with the issues of phones and non-professional technology use without giving people a vision of how to make their life so interesting and intentional autonomous and meaning producing that the idea of looking at youtube shorts all day is nonsensical to them They're like, why would I do that?

1:11:09I have this other stuff that's so much more important. And so I say this in part to point out a problem in our current discussion about technology and meaning. I say this in part as a way to have empathy. If you're struggling to put down your phone like you're talking about with your friends, this is not some moral flaw you have. This is not a lack of will or discipline. It is probably a really rational calculus on the heart of your mind as saying we don't have anything else to go to. So I'd rather be here than staring into the pit just like late 19th century in the lead up to Prohibition. Well, I'd rather be at the bar with like my friends, like something to do than just be at the old turf house, pioneer house just depressed, right?

1:11:57You have to have a bigger, better offer. So that's where the deep life comes in. Now, I do have this whole book, but it's going to be a year. So let's get to some key principles right away. Like what you need to do is you need to fix a contingent vision of your ideal lifestyle. I say contingent so you don't feel like you have to get this right from day one. Good enough for now. What do I want my daily life to actually be like? This has to cover multiple areas. On the show, we often call these buckets. You can't just focus on your job. You can't just focus on a single hobby. You got to cover all of the areas of your life and be able to describe in each what you want that part of your life to be like.

1:12:32Two, these descriptions can't be concrete. I want to have this job and live in this town. That's not a lifestyle vision. That's goals. So describe what you want in each of these different areas in terms of first-person declarative properties. I live in a city that's high energy. my job is one in which um i can be done with work by five and it's not a big deal right like it's not dominating my time you're describing the properties of the different areas of your life that's your lifestyle vision buckets plus properties now the whole goal is how do i try to get closer to those visions in each of these buckets given the particular obstacles i face and particular opportunities i have not gonna start from scratch but i want to navigate around specific obstacles.

1:13:17Oh, living in this city makes all these things really hard. Well, how do I get out of this city? Oh God, if I could do this, this, this, and this, we could move and that's going to make these other things better. Or I am a computer programmer. How can I use that? That's a valuable skill. Where could I go with that in a way that's going to let me get closer to bucket A, B, and C? And then this becomes the main wheel, cyclical process of lifestyle-centric planning. How do I move closer to these visions and these buckets? Repeat, repeat, repeat. And I suggest going bucket by bucket. Let's spend a month just working on the constitution bucket, the bucket about our physical health.

1:13:49Let's do some one-time goals and get in place some new practices and feel good about that. Okay, now let's move on to the next bucket. All right, now we're dealing with craft, like my job. I'm not going to solve it all now, but I have this lifestyle vision for what I want, these properties I want in my job. I want to spend a month or two getting closer to that, finishing some project that builds up a career capital store that might be useful in the future, changing up my practices so that I'm not so distracted and my work has less of a footprint on my life. and you move through each of your buckets and repeat and repeat.

1:14:16And at least once a year on your birthday, go back and make sure those properties are right. That is the rhythm for building a deep life. It's not done with one radical change. It's not something that's going to happen in two weeks, but it's going to be a creative. Like it's going to get better. As you move closer to that ideal lifestyle vision, you're going to feel more self-efficacious, meaning you feel like you have the ability to actually produce positive change in your life. You're going to feel more autonomous. And now the distraction merchants are going to see more superfluous. and now suddenly what used to be your lifeline, your pacifier, is going to seem sort of trite, going to seem kind of embarrassing.

1:14:50You've got stuff you got to do. You don't need to be looking at a video of Abraham Lincoln breakdancing. I got real stuff I got to do. I'm enmeshed in a real community that I'm taking a leadership role in. I don't care about the fight happening on Twitter about some nonsense. right this is the type of thing that begins to happen as you begin the cycle of moving closer to your deep life so i want to end on this question because i think as we enter the new year the week after you hear this episode think about the deep life as your bigger better offer for all this other stuff that's occupying your time and suddenly that challenge of getting away from the sort of zuckerbergs and altmans of the world becomes a lot less uh something that is scary or seeming impossible and something that will instead begin to seem inevitable.

1:15:38All right, Jesse. That wraps us, right? That's our questions? That's our questions. Let's get, can we get one more sleigh bells? I think Santa's coming. Deliver some coal to Mark Zuckerberg. And thank you for listening. I guess our next episode will be right before the new year. So we got another episode. I think we're gonna play a classic episode you'll like. And then we got some cool stuff all queued up in the new year. So we got a lot coming up in the deep questions world. But we will see you soon. Have a good holidays. Until then, as always, stay deep.

1:16:12Hi, it's Cal here. One more thing before you go. If you like the Deep Questions podcast, you will love my email newsletter, which you can sign up for at calnewport.com. Each week I send out a new essay about the theory or practice of living deeply. I've been writing this newsletter since 2007 and over 70 ,000 subscribers get it sent to their inboxes each week. So if you are serious about resisting the forces of distraction and shallowness that afflict our world, you've got to sign up for my newsletter at calnewport.com and get some deep wisdom delivered to your inbox each week.

1:17:04Thank you.

1:17:32Thank you.